RFK Jr. Decertifies Kentucky Organ Procurement Organization

This article was published by National Review online on August 5, 2026.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J. Smith

Say what you will about Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but he definitely cares about ensuring that organ transplant medicine remains ethical, and unlike many government functionaries, he and his department are actually doing something about it. Thus, on the back of Medicare decertifying a Florida organ procurement organization for cause in 2025, the government is now decertifying the Network for Hope that operates in Kentucky and a few other states.

The government warned the network last year that its procurement procedures were ethically deficient. But the organ procurement organization never cleaned up its act despite knowing it was being scrutinized, including, apparently, for seeking to procure organs from people who had not died.

The unethical cases involve a procedure sometimes known as heart death (as opposed to brain death). In a heart-death donation, the donor is usually receiving intensive care. That medical support is withdrawn with consent and if cardiac arrest occurs — sometimes it doesn’t and the patient is then to be returned to care — after three or so minutes the patient is declared-dead because cardiopulmonary function has irreversibly stopped. After that, the procurement commences.

The case that caused the government to intervene is a real horror story as described by the New York Times:

In Kentucky, scrutiny began when a congressional committee heard testimony about the case of Anthony Thomas Hoover II, who had an overdose in 2021. After family members were told that he would not recover, they authorized donation.

As coordinators arranged for the surgery, Mr. Hoover began to stir, at one point “thrashing on the bed,” according to records reviewed by The Times. Still, Network for Hope, then called Kentucky Organ Donor Affiliates, tried to move forward. Finally, on the way to the operation, Mr. Hoover cried, pulled his knees to his head and shook his head, and a hospital doctor refused to withdraw life support.

Mr. Hoover eventually recovered, although he has lingering neurological injuries.

Good grief.

Despite that case, Network for Hope avoided punishment. But then:

A federal investigation last year determined that the group had similarly ignored signs of growing alertness in more than 70 other patients. Although the organ removals were eventually cancelled, the investigation said multiple patients exhibited pain or distress as they were being readied for surgery. Overall, more than 100 cases had “concerning features,” the investigators said, noting that the majority of transplants arranged by the Kentucky group were from circulatory-death patients.

Good for Kennedy and the government for moving on this. This is important. The people’s trust in organ transplant medicine is already shallow as unwise efforts to loosen ethical standards advocated by prominent bioethicists — such as allowing living people to be harvested — threaten to further erode public confidence. If we want to maximize the number of organs donated, people have to believe that their lives are deemed more important than their organs.

Next, the government should prohibit the use of a relatively new organ procurement procedure called “normothermic regional perfusion,” which allows cardiac arrest, cuts off circulation to the brain to induce brain death, and then restarts the heart before procurement. It seems to me — and I am far from alone in thinking this — that if someone is resuscitated successfully, he or she is not dead. Moreover, making patients brain-dead on purpose seems little different to me than actively killing them.

Is MAiD Medical Murder? A Podcast Discussion

Podcast exposes red flags regarding MAiD in Canada

Viviana Runstedler
Staff Writer, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Dr Christopher Shaw

*The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition refers to (MAiD) euthanasia as medical homicide.

We are pleased to share information on a podcast episode that exposes the truth about (MAiD) euthanasia in Canada that mainstream podcasts avoid discussing.

On an episode aired July 17th 2026, the Children’s Health Defense (Canada Chapter) interviewed two medical professionals about (MAiD) euthanasia in Canada. 

Dr Christopher Shaw is a neuroscientist and professor at the University of British Columbia as well as the co-chair of the scientific and medical advisory committee of the Canadian Citizens Care Alliance. Dr York N. Hsiang is a professor emeritus of surgery also at the University of British Columbia and a member of the scientific and medical advisory committee of the Canadian Citizens Care Alliance. Together, these two doctors presented a helpful overview of the current state of MAiD in Canada and shared eye-opening information concerning the ongoing execution of MAiD.

Dr York N. Hsiang

Dr Hsiang began by reminding listeners that MAiD is now the 5th leading cause of death in Canada and is an effective way to recoup healthcare costs. He briefly reviews recent discussions to expand Canadian MAiD approvals for mental illness and for minors. He went on to discuss issues within the current MAiD system.

One major issue presented by Dr Hsiang involves the misuse and misunderstanding of the drugs used in MAiD. The drugs used in Canada are essentially anesthetics used in very high doses to cause death. He referenced a 2022 article in the Canadian Medical Association journal that “only 21% of the physicians who are actively giving MAiD can be said to fully understand the drugs that they are giving for MAiD” (timestamp 8:30)

Dr Hsiang continues:

“about a quarter of patients took over an hour to die. And this is, clinically, this meaning you no longer have a heartbeat. Your brain could still be functioning, but you no longer have a heartbeat and so you are then deemed to be dead. The shocking thing is that when you actually look at the drugs that are being used, many of the drugs, in particular being the kill shot, the cardio-toxic drugs, in one quarter of those patients was not given. Why was that? Was that the reason why patients were taking over 1 hour to die? At the same time when MAiD is explained to be a painless procedure, less than one percent of the patients actually received a true medication for pain, in other words a narcotic. Very very surprising. And so, I have concerns that as the program gets expanded even more there’s going to be more practitioners that want to get on to this because it is lucrative and the majority of them don’t have any training. Nobody has training in how to kill a patient, our whole training is how to save a patient and keep them alive.” (timestamp 10:15)

Dr Hsiang is not the first doctor we have heard expressing concern about the administration of euthanasia and how the drugs may actually affect the person experiencing a euthanasia death. EPC has previously reported on euthanasia deaths which caused great distress to the deceased and family members present at the death. 

The National Post also covered this issue in 2022, recognizing that until euthanasia was legalized, doctors had never given doses this large of these particular drugs. The National Post article included a quote from Dr Joel Zivot suggesting that euthanasia could “feel like drowning” and that he “worries paralytics could mask an unpleasant death.” Zivot’s conclusions were based on his work studying capital punishment via lethal injection in the US which uses a common sedative to Canadian euthanasia protocol.

Another red flag that Dr Hsiang has identified in Canada is:

“physician zealots who contact family practitioner offices, and this I have heard from discussing this with family doctors, that they want to know on each family doctor’s list how many patients are eligible for MAiD. There is a financial incentive for these doctors since they are reimbursed quite well for a very short procedure.” (timestamp 9:08)

This quote highlights the pressure being placed on many Canadians to accept and utilize euthanasia. Discussion also turned to the Dying with Dignity Canada “Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) Activity Book” created for children. This child-centric material is especially dark considering the context of possible expansion of MAiD eligibility to impressionable minors.

Dr Hsiang and Dr Shaw also speculate that since euthanasia is used to facilitate organ donation, the expansion of eligibility to minors would increase accessibility to “younger” organs for donation and this may be a contributing factor behind these criteria expansions. We have covered several of these issues on the blog over the years; our posts related to organ donation can be found here.

Drs Hsiang and Shaw are currently working on a book about euthanasia, expected to be published next year. The portion of the podcast regarding euthanasia ends at timestamp 16:40. We thank these doctors for working independently of mainstream discussions to bring these issues to light in an open forum.

Death by Organ Donation pushed in Medical Journal.

This article was published by National Review online on July 9, 2026.

By Wesley J Smith

The legalization of assisted suicide/euthanasia corrupts medical ethics and not just because killing patients or assisting their suicides is a direct violation of the Hippocratic oath. No: Transforming sick and disabled people into a killable caste also objectifies them as potential natural resources to be mined or harvested.

Hastened death and organ-harvesting have already been conjoined in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, the Netherlands, and Belgium. (In the latter two countries, some cases have involved mentally ill patients.) The practice has been supported in prominent medical journals. It is not alarmism to note that the idea is gaining ever wider acceptance among the medical and bioethics intelligentsia. 

But killing and then harvesting doesn’t go far enough for some mainstream bioethicists. Where euthanasia is legal, they don’t see why organ procurement can’t also be the means of death for patients who want to donate. In other words, don’t just kill and then harvest; harvest to kill.

Oh, Wesley! That would never be allowed!

No? The proposal was just pushed with all due respect in the world’s most influential medical journal, the New England Journal of Medicine, written by three prominent bioethicist-physicians (two of whom are from Harvard: all bow).

First, the authors correctly note that the “dead donor rule” — the prime ethical directive in organ transplant medicine — requires that vital organ donors to be dead before organ retrieval (let’s not get into the brain death controversy here). Moreover, it forbids organ procurement from being the cause of death.

But with the increasing legalization of euthanasia, the bioethicists urge a dramatic loosening of that foundational legal requirement. Where lethal jabs — death by homicide — are legal, they want the organ-harvesting itself to be the cause of death, what they call “death by organ donation.” From “Contextualizing the Dead Donor Rule in an Era of Voluntary Euthanasia“:

Voluntary euthanasia relies on this lawful waiver of the right to life under defined safeguards. This reasoning extends to organ donation after euthanasia, in which a patient knowingly consents to a death that will be followed by organ procurement. Organ donation after euthanasia creates a rare opportunity to honor end-of-life autonomy, since patients can articulate their own goals, including how their death might serve others.

Notice that they don’t call for suicide prevention. Once people can be lawfully killed, treating them as so many organ farms follows logically. But what to do about that pesky dead donor rule? Killing for organs may violate it, the authors admit, but it is within the spirit of righteous ethics, so loosening the rule can be “contextualized”:

In the context of voluntary euthanasia, in which patients provide first-person consent, trust doesn’t need to rest entirely on temporal sequencing. Voluntary euthanasia’s aim of relieving suffering with a humane end-of-life process aligns with the DDR’s concern for minimizing harm. When properly safeguarded, death by organ donation violates the Death Requirement without necessarily violating its underlying spirit of trust preservation and protecting patients from harm.

Baloney. Killing for organs can quickly become the primary reason for granting someone’s request to die “as a plum to society” (as I predicted back in 1993). Knowledge of that option can also be a material influence on whether and when a despairing person asks for euthanasia.

For example, a 16-year-old Belgian girl with brain cancer asked to be killed in part so that her organs could be harvested. She was put into a 36-hour coma — not for her medical benefit but to conduct needed tissue tests and find suitable recipients. The bioethicists claim that respect for patient autonomy should permit killing for organs:

Although death by organ donation may be viewed as a departure from the DDR, shifting focus away from the temporal relationship to death determination, we interpret it as consistent with a historical pattern of recontextualization. In the setting of regulated voluntary euthanasia and organ donation after euthanasia, death by organ donation warrants open, transparent dialogue. Since patients requesting voluntary euthanasia can provide first-person consent and articulate their values, that option might offer a unique opportunity to respect their autonomous wishes by integrating donation into their end-of-life planning.

Well, why should that rationalization not apply also to any suicidal person? After all, if someone really wants to die, who are we to interfere with his or her “autonomous wishes” by setting parameters on what kind of suffering qualifies for death by organ donation? Besides, killing for organs would result in a better product:

Death by organ donation would enable cardiac donation, typically prohibited with DCD, and improve recipient outcomes by reducing warm ischemia time, thereby lowering primary graft-dysfunction rates to levels similar to those achieved with donation after brain death. In addition, it might substantially increase the donor pool, potentially saving many lives. Since death would be a chosen and inevitable outcome in these cases, enabling retrieval under ideal conditions represents a Pareto improvement: no one would be made worse off, and multiple lives might be saved.

The morality of our society would be much worse off. And so would the patients, because they would become objectified once consent was granted, even if the desire to donate is the reason for their request.

How respectable is this kill-to-harvest proposal becoming? It has been proposed before without much objection. It doesn’t get more prestigious than the NEJM. And it is now sufficiently mainstream for NPR to have featured one of the latest proposal’s authors, Dr. Robert D. Truog, in a respectful interview.

We live in very disturbing times.

Concerns about Organ Donation.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Larry Black Jr with his sister Molly Watts

KFF Health News published an article by Cara Anthony on September 12, 2025 about organ donation featuring the story of Larry Black Jr who on March 24, 2019, at the age of 22, arrived at the SSM Health Saint Louis University Hospital after being shot in the head.

A week later, Black, was on the surgical table being prepared for organ harvesting when his physician demanded that Black be removed from the surgical table, because he was not declared brain dead and his heart was still beating.

Organ donation and assisted death (youtube link)

Anthony reported that:

Black’s sister Molly Watts said the family had doubts after agreeing to donate Black’s organs but felt unheard until the 34-year-old doctor, in his first year as a neurosurgeon, intervened.

Today, Black, now 28, is a musician and the father of three children. He still needs regular physical therapy for lingering health issues from the gun injury. And Black said he is haunted by what he remembers from those days while he was lying in a medically induced coma.

“I heard my mama yelling,” he recalled. “Everybody was there yelling my name, crying, playing my favorite songs, sending prayers up.”

He said he had tried to show everyone in his hospital room that he heard them. He recalled knocking on the side of the bed, blinking his eyes, trying to show that he was fighting for his life.

At Last! A Fair Shake for Terri Schiavo’s Brother in the New York Times

This article was published by National Review online on April 13, 2026.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley Smith

My friend Bobby Schindler, the late Terri Schiavo’s brother, is one of the kindest, humblest, most decent people I know. And yet, because he dared to stand up for the inherent value of his sister’s life and against the injustice of her court-ordered dehydration — and has continued to fight on behalf of brain-injured people and their families — journalists and bioethicists often look down their noses at him as someone just beyond the pale of sophisticated society.

But in a story in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine reciting how many allegedly unconscious patients are actually aware — I refuse to use the term “vegetative” as it is a dehumanizing denigration of intrinsic human value — much to my delighted surprise, Bobby is treated fairly and with respect by journalist Katie Engelhart.

Bobby Schindler

As the head of the Terri Schiavo Life and Hope Network, Bobby toils as a patient advocate for people who are being pressured to end the lives of their cognitively disabled loved ones. It is in this context that a woman fighting for her husband’s life meets Bobby:

One day, someone in the group told Tabitha that she should contact a man named Bobby Schindler, a patient advocate who helped people like Aaron.

Tabitha messaged Schindler through his website, and he called her the next day. He listened as if he really cared. Schindler told Tabitha that her hope for Aaron was right and just. That it was correct to resist the doctors’ appeals for “comfort care.” He offered to introduce Tabitha to a lawyer he knew, so that, in dealings with the hospital — for instance, if the hospital wanted to discharge Aaron to a nursing home before she felt he was ready — she could say, “My lawyer will handle this.” And Schindler seemed to understand everything that Tabitha was going through, because of what had happened to his sister, Terri Schiavo.

Bobby is not in it for himself, but to help:

In the 20 years since he established the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network, Schindler has never advertised his services. “I think just the fact of Terri’s name is enough for people to find us,” he says. Most of the time, people wanted his advice. Or the name of a good lawyer. Or money. Almost everyone wanted more time. They called from the I.C.U. to say that doctors had started talking about comfort care, about organs.

Schindler would tell the callers what he had come to believe in the years since his sister died one of the most litigated deaths in U.S. history: that there might be hope for their loved ones. That they could fight hospital administrators. That the persistent vegetative state diagnosis was “subjective.”

This is what he does. When Bobby stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Jahi McMath’s mother at a news conference when she was fighting against a brain death diagnosis for her daughter in Oakland, he saw a mother’s pain. Behind the scenes, to my shame, I counseled him against getting involved. Fighting brain death is not the policy hill to die on, I said. Nothing can prevent Jahi from being taken off life support.

I was doubly wrong. In the end, Jahi was not taken off life support but moved to New Jersey, and it turned out, she was catastrophically disabled but not dead. I witnessed it myself. (She later died of complications from intestinal surgery.)

In any event, one can disagree with Bobby’s beliefs and his family’s valiant struggle (in my view) to save Terri’s life. But I am pleased that — finally — a mainstream journalist treated Bobby with the respect and fairness he deserves. And in the New York Times, no less. Will wonders never cease.

Canada will soon surpass 100,000 euthanasia deaths.

I predict that Canada will surpass 100,000 euthanasia deaths in April 2026.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

We recently received the 2025 fourth quarter Ontario euthanasia report from the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario. 

The report stated that in Ontario there were 5303 reported euthanasia deaths in 2025 which was up from 4944 in 2024, which represented a 7.2% increase. This was up from 4641 euthanasia deaths in 2023 which represented a 6.5% increase that year. 

Therefore the growth in euthanasia deaths is increasing, not stabilizing.

The report indicated that all Ontario MAiD deaths, in 2025, were clinician administered (euthanasia). In jurisdictions that legalize both euthanasia and assisted suicide, nearly all of the deaths are euthanasia.

Health Canada released the Sixth Annual Report on Medical Assistance in Dying in Canada on November 28, 2025.

The 2024 report stated that there were 16,499 reported (MAiD) Canadian euthanasia deaths which was up by 6.9% from 15,427 in 2023.

Since Ontario represents 39% of Canada's population, I conservatively predict that the number of euthanasia deaths in Canada increased by 7% in 2025 and I estimate that there were approximately 17,650 Canadian euthanasia deaths in 2025.

According to Health Canada, from legalization until December 31, 2024 there were 76,475 Canadian MAiD deaths. Based on my prediction that there were about 17,650 euthanasia deaths in 2025, I predict that there were around 94,125 MAiD deaths in Canada from legalization until December 31, 2025. 

I predict that Canada will surpass 100,000 euthanasia sometime in mid - late April 2026. 

From exception to expectation.

When Canada legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide, that we called MAiD to make us feel better about poisoning people to death, we were told that it would be for people who were terminally ill and suffering. We were sold killing as a last resort solution and we were assured that it would not be common but rather it would be an exception. There was nothing further from the truth.

Canada immediately experienced euthanasia deaths that did not fit the euthanasia sales pitch. In November 2016, only a few months after legalization, we were contacted about a woman who died by euthanasia in British Columbia, who may have only had a bladder infection. 

What made the case even more grievous was that the euthanasia doctor didn't bother to do any tests to determine whether or not the woman was actually dying and when the family expressed concern about the death approval, the euthanasia doctor waived the 10-day waiting period, killing the woman within 3 days.

More recently there have been several concerning euthanasia deaths that have been published by the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario. To list a few:

• A woman was killed by euthanasia after her husband requested it for her (Read). 
• A man sought euthanasia after experiencing hospital overcrowding (Read). 
• A man with an essential tremor, who was lonely died by euthanasia (Read).  
• Some euthanasia deaths were driven by homelessness, fear and isolation (Read).
• Ontario Coroner's euthanasia report: Poor at risk of coercion (Read).
• Ontario: At least 428 non-compliant euthanasia deaths (Read).

Other notable Ontario euthanasia data:

In 2025 final consent was waived in 250 Ontario euthanasia deaths. 

One of the outcomes of passing Bill C-7 in March 2021 was that the legislation allowed doctors to kill someone who was incapable of providing final consent, as long as the person had consented to be killed while still competent. 

Therefore 1 in 21 Ontario euthanasia deaths was done to someone who was not capable of providing final consent.

Organ donation after euthanasia:

The Ontario report indicated that in 2025 only 31 of the 5303 people who died by euthanasia also became an organ donor. Some might suggest that this is insignificant, but the circumstances for approving organ donation after euthanasia are limited. Many people with a terminal condition do not have healthy organs. Since only 30% of the euthanasia deaths take place in the hospital, it is very difficult to kill someone outside of a hospital and then retrieve their organs in time for donation purposes.

Euthanasia based on disability in Ontario.

For people who were approved to be killed by euthanasia and self-identified as having a disability, the disability was: 20.37% mobility, 11.47% pain related, 7.09% flexibility, 5.36% dexterity, 2.34% hearing, 1.28% memory. Other disabilities were listed but were less common.

The youngest person to be killed by euthanasia in 2025 was 20 years old while the oldest person was 108. The average age was 78.

More data will be released by the Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario and more data will be gathered from other provinces in the near future. The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition will keep you up-to-date on these developments.

Canadian Bioethicist: Euthanasia Should Not Be Considered ‘Special’

This article was published by National Review online on January 18, 2026.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

Canada has leaped into euthanasia's moral abyss with a smile on its face. Since 2015, killable categories have expanded dramatically, from those whose death is "reasonably foreseeable'' — a category that was already so broad you could drive a hearse through it — to the chronically ill, people with disabilities, the frail elderly, and, starting next year, the mentally ill.

More than 16,000 Canadians were killed by doctors and nurse practitioners last year. It's the fifth-most-common cause of death in the country.

Many commentators point to these and other facts about Canada’s euthanasia regime to argue against legalization. Defenders of euthanasia know this and have mounted counternarratives trying to convince us that so many killings of such a varied numbers of people is an excellent outcome of a humane policy. The latest example is in the Canadian Journal of Bioethics, in an article by bioethicist and philosophy professor Wayne Sumner, in which he argues that euthanasia should be considered a ho-hum question, nothing to worry about.

Sumner shrugs at the dramatic increase in the numbers killed since legalization because euthanasia is just another medical treatment and should not be considered to be extraordinary. Indeed, to Sumner, doctors’ killing patients is really no different than performing hip replacements. Ditto abortion. And since an increase in abortion rates (to him) is a good, and no one objects to more hip replacements, what’s the problem with the statistical increase in deaths by euthanasia? From “What’s So Special About Medically Assisted Dying?”:

If we regard an increasing number of joint replacements or abortions as a success, with supply having risen to meet demand, why should we think that an increasing number of MAiD provisions is a failure, or somehow a problem? If more awareness, more providers, and more support are good things for these other services, why are they a bad thing for MAiD? Why should we think differently about MAiD than we do about other medical procedures? What’s so special about MAiD?

Let me count the ways.

1. Euthanasia isn’t about improving life or treating disease, as a hip replacement is, but causing death of the patient. That makes the act different in kind from true medical treatments.
2. Legalized killing changes culture. Once euthanasia becomes normalized, people become acclimated to the terminations of vulnerable people. For example, a recent poll of Canadians found that 28 percent of respondents approved strongly or moderately of allowing euthanasia for homelessness! Before legalization, I can’t imagine a pollster even asking the question.
3. Legalization leads to the objectification of the killable caste. Hence, in Canada, the conjoining of euthanasia with organ-harvesting. Once that happens, organ donation can easily become a prime factor in a suicidal patient’s asking to die, as it offers society a utilitarian stake in suicidal patients.
4. It can become a means of reducing medical costs. After all, what could be a cheaper “treatment” than a lethal jab?
5. It can supplant the provision of proper medical care. Indeed, in Canada, several patients have been euthanized after they couldn’t access specialized care.
6. If it is not “special,” why the need for guidelines and restrictions? If someone wants to be dead because they find continued life unacceptable, why say no?

Sumner makes the usual argument that killing is no different than refusing life-sustaining medical treatment, since both “shorten” life.

Even before MAiD was legalized, those who were so disposed had available to them a number of ways of managing their exit from the world. If their condition required life-sustaining treatment — whether this took the form of technological support or surgical intervention or continuing medication — they could refuse further treatment and so hasten their death. If it did not require such treatment, they still had the option of seeking death by refusing food and water. Plus, of course, the time-honoured method of death by overdose of pharmaceuticals.

Suicide is supposedly “time-honoured”! See what I mean about euthanasia changing culture?

US HHS Deputy Secretary critcizes Canada for it's organ donation after euthanasia program.

“We thought we’d seen all the possible horrors, you know, in America, and then Canada had this strange new horror that was really just shocking,”

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

Gabrielle M. Etzel reported for the Washington Examiner on January 8, 2026 that US Deputy Health and Human Services Secretary Jim O’Neill stated in an exclusive interview that Canada’s permissive physician-assisted suicide program has crossed ethical boundaries by how it has increased deceased organ donation rates through MAiD.

Deputy Secretary Jim O'Neill

O'Neill also told the Washington Examiner

that he was disturbed to learn that Canada’s physician-assisted suicide program, operating under the label Medical Aid in Dying, has enabled it to become a world leader in organ transplant policy from deceased donors.

O'Neill stated that Health and Human Services are trying to:

"revive trust in the American Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network after multiple troubling reports of organs nearly being harvested from live patients in several states, including Kentucky and New Jersey."

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sent a media release on July 21, 2025 about a study on organ donation and organ transplants in Kentucky, southwest Ohio, and part of West Virginia.

The Health and Human Services study examined 351 organ donation approvals and determined that in 103 of the cases the dead donor rule may have been violated.

I published three articles on the organ donation scandal (Article 1) (Article 2) (Article 3).

Etzel reported that:

O’Neill said that Canada’s program was uniquely problematic compared to even the most egregious stories in the U.S.

“We thought we’d seen all the possible horrors, you know, in America, and then Canada had this strange new horror that was really just shocking,” said O’Neill.

Etzel commented on a Canadian Medical Association Journal paper in 2024 that outlined a “substantial increase in deceased donation” in Quebec during the first years of the MAID program.

The paper stated that from 2018 to 2022, the number of deceased donors who died by physician-assisted suicide increased from 4.9% in 2018 to 14% in 2022.

Etzel then reported that:

The Canadian Institute for Health Information reported that 62 Canadians donated their organs out of 16,499 MAiD deaths in 2024, accounting for only 7% of the less than 900 total deceased donors across Canada.

O’Neill said that he has not spoken with his Canadian counterpart about the matter, but the apparent link between assisted suicide and organ donation rates in Canada “is very unfortunate.”

The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition shares the concerns of Deputy Health and Human Services Secretary Jim O’Neill concerning the connection between killing by euthanasia (MAiD) and organ donation in Canada. We are convinced that some people have asked be killed so they can offer their organs as an "altuistic act."

Link to articles about concerns related to organ donation (Articles Link).

Wesley Smith - Criticism of organ donation article. My article stands.

This article was published by National Review online on December 31, 2025.

I republished Wesley Smith's article - Bioethicist: Let Surgeons Kill Patients During Organ Harvesting on December 29, 2025. This is Wesley Smith's response to criticism of his article.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J. Smith

I welcome Lawrence Masek’s response to my criticism of his journal article. I am sorry he didn’t appreciate my perspective, but I take nothing back.

Let’s start with a matter of little importance. Masek claimed I said his article would curl your toes. No, I wrote that I cover articles published in the professional journals because “some” of them would. Whether your digits react to his effort thusly is a matter for you to decide.

As to the substance of his rebuttal, Masek claims at great length that the dead donor rule, which forbids killing for organs, would also prohibit many common interventions in clinical medicine as “suicide.” He writes:

Permitting lethal organ procurement would enable patients to commit suicide by donating their vital organs, but the same is true of permitting lethal palliation and the refusal of life support.

This is verifiably untrue. Dying from a side effect of an ethical medical treatment like palliation is not suicide any more than a patient dying during heart surgery is euthanasia.

As for refusing life support, that is beyond a reasonable doubt, not suicide.

• First, the patient might not die. Take out a vital organ and there can be no other outcome.
• When refusing life support, if the patient dies, it is from the illness or injury. In contrast, removing a vital organ causing death is not a natural demise.
• Finally, the issue of whether removing or refusing life support is suicide was decided in 1997 by the Supreme Court in Vacco v. Quill, in which the Justices ruled unanimously: “The distinction between letting a patient die and making that patient die is important, logical, rational, and well established.”

I can understand that as a professor at a Catholic university (which I didn’t think relevant), he would eschew a utilitarian label. But his article is certainly utilitarianish. The following is from his conclusion. You be the judge (my emphasis):

I conclude with an assertion that seems plausible but for which I do not have an argument: If an action would save someone’s life without killing anyone, then the burden of proof is on those who say that the action is wrong, not on those who say that the action is right. If this principle is correct, the burden of proof belongs to proponents of the DDR, specifically the version that prohibits procuring vital organs in a way that would not kill the donor.

Someone might adopt this version of the DDR as a way to avoid killing a donor, but I have argued that procuring a vital organ in a way that kills the donor is not always wrong. I hope my arguments will persuade proponents of the DDR to reconsider the rule or to defend it without relying on principles of ethics that are too strict or views of intentions that are too broad.

In the real world, you can’t procure vital organs without ultimately killing donors. Distorting definitions to allow the ethically impermissible to serve a greater good sure seems utilitarian to me.

That Masek doesn’t offer specific policy proposals is irrelevant. The implications of his argument are quite clear.

Frankly, if his intention was to toe the line of permissible ethical argumentation from a sanctity of life perspective or to somehow fortify the defense of the DDR, it didn’t work.

Will assisted suicide / organ harvesting come to the US?

This article was published by National Review online on January 3, 2026.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

Once someone is considered killable or supported in suicide, they may become objectified so as to be used instrumentally. Such is the case with people requesting to be euthanized. The idea is that they are going to die anyway, want to die–even as they do not receive suicide prevention — so we might as well get good use out of them such as by conjoining their hastened deaths with organ harvesting.

This abandonment (in my view) is rife in Canada, where in Ontario, a patient approved for a lethal jab will soon receive a call from the organ procurement society asking for their organs. The Netherlands and Belgium also permit conjoining organ harvesting — including of mentally ill patients — with euthanasia.

But that conjoining has not reached the U.S. because no states (yet) allow lethal injection. Still, the assisted-suicide movement wants it.

One of its generals, the bioethicist Thaddeus Mason Pope, has just released a post on his blog urging that ways be found to conjoin organ harvesting with a patient swallowing a lethal overdose — as just occurred in Australia. From his entry:

Only 10-15% of U.S. MAID deaths would even be eligible for donation. And only a subset of those patients would want to die under conditions (e.g., in a hospital) that would permit donation. But at a time where OPOs [organ procurement organizations] are pushing boundaries with DCD [Donation after Circulatory Death] and NRP [Neonatal Resuscitation Program] to maximize numbers, they should investigate how to obtain organs from some of the thousands of annual MAID cases across 14 U.S. jurisdictions.

So, here we go.

What’s wrong with that, Wesley?

Conjoining organ harvesting with assisted suicide or euthanasia gives society a “stake” in sick people being made dead. For advocates of this policy, it doesn’t matter that the donation choice could be the precipitating motive for sick suicidal persons to end their lives, or at least, could influence the timing. If that is what they want, it’s win-win.

Pope’s low percentage statistics are based on assisted suicide being restricted to people diagnosed with a terminal illness. But once we allowed organ donation after assisted suicide of the terminally ill, it would be unlikely to stop there. People who are not dying generally have “better organs,” and so the prospect of garnering even more organs could become a policy justification for expanding eligibility for suicide facilitation to people with chronic illnesses, disabilities, and mental illness, or the reason to switch from self-administration to lethal jabs. After all, once we accept a policy principle, we tend to follow where it leads.

Time will tell if we take the same road, of course. But the question now on the table is whether this instrumental use of suicidal people is what we really want as a society, even if that is what they want. Because if we follow down the path we are currently on, I fear that is what we are going to get.

Bioethicist: Let Surgeons Kill Patients During Organ Harvesting

This article was published by the National Review online December 28, 2025.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

The “dead donor rule” (DDR) is a legal and ethical mandate that requires vital organ donors to be truly dead before their body parts are procured. A corollary to the rule holds that people cannot be killed for their organs. The DDR promotes trust in the system and protects the vulnerable — but is flexible enough to permit living donations of one kidney and parts of a liver from altruistic donors.

Utilitarian bioethicists have long argued against the DDR and its corollary based on the notion that killing those who are dying or want to donate will relieve the suffering of people who want to live and need an organ. And here we go again. The Journal of Medical Ethics — out of Oxford — has published a long and complicated piece by Ohio bioethicist Lawrence J. Masek arguing that patients who want to donate should be able to be killed during — or as a direct result of — the organ-procurement process.

First, the author pulls a typical switcheroo often seen in bioethical discourse. Here’s a relevant example: We were assured over many years that brain dead is “dead.” Now, that this is accepted widely, many bioethicists are claiming that actually, it isn’t. If they are right, the DDR would preclude organ procurement from such patients. But these bioethicists claim instead that procuring organs from those diagnosed as brain dead also means that we can harvest comatose patients whose brains are clearly functioning.

See how that works? Rather than stick to the rule, expand it and pretend it is not being stretched.

This is Masek’s tactic too. He claims that since taking one kidney in an altruistic living donation harms the patient through reduced kidney function without violating the DDR, it is also okay to take the liver of a patient that will lead to death a few hours later.

Similarly, he suggests surgery to save a fetus harms the mother through incisions and the like, which she accepts as of less importance than the life of her baby. He also says an emergency C-section that will likely lead to the death of the mother to save the baby is an example of harm caused that should also permit doctors to procure vital organs while the donor is still alive. From the article (citations omitted):

Performing the c-section would cause blood loss, which would be the cause of the woman’s death, so the do-not-kill principle prohibits the c-section in this case, even though the only alternative is allowing both the woman and her child to die. I see the fact that a principle requires allowing two patients to die instead of saving one patient as a problem for the [DDR do not kill] principle.

He also claims palliation at the end of life as another example:

Another objection to the do-not-kill principle is that it prohibits lethal palliation [misnomer alert!], such as the use of an analgesic that relieves pain but also has the side-effects of slowing respiration and causing death. Lethal palliation is widely accepted even among proponents of the DDR

And, he even claims that volunteering to have one’s organs taken to save others is akin to other “heroic” life sacrifices:

If people may jump on a grenade to save other soldiers or jump in front of a speeding motorcycle to save a child, then they may sacrifice their lives by donating a heart or other vital organ. I agree that sacrificing one’s life to save another by jumping on a grenade or in front of a motorcycle is analogous to sacrificing one’s life to save another by donating a vital organ.

But these examples are utterly sophistic. The (stacked deck) medical hypotheticals Masek offers either do not kill the patient, or if death comes in the C-section hypothetical and end-of-life palliation [which is not known as “lethal palliation”] examples, they would be cases of death as undesired and unintended side effects (which can happen in any medical procedure). (This is the principle of double effect, which Masek misapplies in his piece.)

Moreover, in the C-section and palliation examples–as well as refusing life support–the patient might not die as a result of the care. You never know.

Jumping on a grenade to save other soldiers is not the same as the soldiers throwing that person on the grenade, which would be more akin to a surgeon killing for organs. Because whether death happens immediately, say by taking a heart, or takes hours after taking a liver, harvesting vital organs from a living person is intended to kill that patient to save the life of another. Besides, such extraordinary exigencies as the grenade example cannot be the basis of reasoned public policy.

Transforming doctors into killers would open the door to all sorts of gruesome policies, such as euthanasia by organ harvesting. Yes, Masek goes there:

Another reason to accept the DDR is the belief that anyone who denies the DDR must defend euthanasia. Permitting lethal organ procurement would enable patients to commit suicide by donating their vital organs, but the same is true of permitting lethal palliation and the refusal of life support. That a person could do X (eg, donate vital organs, take a lethal painkiller or refuse life-support) as a means of killing oneself does not mean that anyone who does X intends to kill. (I do not defend organ donation euthanasia, which is donating a vital organ in order to end one’s life in order to end suffering, which would be an example of intending death as a means of relieving suffering, because I have argued that lethal organ procurement is not necessarily an example of intending death.)

Please. Take a liver and there can be only one outcome. The patient would know it. The doctors would know it.

Besides, euthanasia conjoined with organ harvesting is already allowed in Belgium, New Zealand, Australia, Netherlands, and Canada–and in some cases that has been an inducement for choosing to be killed or affected the timing of when the death facilitation would take place–to widespread media applause.

Why do I bother to discuss this and other such articles here? Isn’t professional discourse akin to arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

No! Public policy is often formulated through this very kind of back and forth in professional journals. This kind of top-down policy making is why feeding tubes can be legally withdrawn from unconscious patients and gender-confused children can be administered puberty blockers in many jurisdictions.

Which is why I try to bring these ivory-tower discussions into the public square. People need know what is being planned for them. Because as I always say, if you want to see what is going to go very wrong in society next, read bioethics, medical, and science journals. Some of the articles published there will curl your toes.

Medical Journal Article Supports Conjoining Euthanasia and Organ Harvesting

This article is published by National Review online on October 27, 2025.

Wesley Smith

By Wesley J Smith

Back in 1993, in my first anti-euthanasia piece, I warned that once assisted suicide became normalized, it would soon be conjoined with organ harvesting “as a plum to society.” What I didn’t expect was for the leaders of the organ-transplant medical sector to applaud.

I thought they would understand that conjoining organ procurement with euthanasia would create an incentive to be killed. That has happened more than once, and yet organ-transplant and other medical journals continue to publish studies supportive of kill and harvest (my term).

The Journal of Hepatology published an article that cheers the process of performing a liver transplant with the organ of a person who received a lethal jab in Canada. From “Utilization of Liver Grafts Obtained After Medical Assistance in Dying” (citations omitted):

In most cases, the eligible patient is admitted to the hospital, and the MAiD medications are administered in a designated care room – most often a private room in the intensive care unit – in the presence of family or friends, according to the patient’s wishes. The medications are administered intravenously and, although some slight variations exist, most commonly include: 1) heparin at a dose of 1,000 units per kg body weight; 2) benzodiazepine (i.e. midazolam) to induce relaxation; 3) propofol to induce deep coma which also ensures that the patient is fully unconscious and does not experience any discomfort; 4) neuromuscular blockers (i.e. rocuronium) which leads to cessation of spontaneous breathing and, subsequently, death…The patient is then transported to the operating room for the organ procurement. Throughout the process, no member of the procurement team is involved in the MAiD procedure.

Let’s understand what is happening here. A patient becomes suicidal and asks to be killed. He or she is not offered suicide prevention but instead becomes objectified and viewed as a potential organ farm.

This should be profoundly upsetting to the medical sector as it comes very close to violating a corollary to the dead donor rule (only the dead can donate vital organs) that prohibits killing patients for their body parts. To get around that, apologists for conjoining euthanasia and harvesting pretend that the two events are separate.

But are they really? Canadian and other media have made a big deal out of the potential to be killed and donate. People are being “educated” about that potential all the time — one might even say persuaded.

And indeed, in some cases, donating organs can become a strong incentive for being killed, as happened with a 16-year-old brain cancer patient in Belgium. From the glowing story in Le Soir:

She is fifteen years old for a few more days, her eyes sparkling, full of life. . . . It’s summer, the weather is very nice on the heights of Liège, the sun is cascading on its bed. Eva will celebrate her birthday on Sunday – sixteen years old! – and she has long and patiently chosen her gift: she is going to die. . . .

Yes, she wants to die, without too much delay. But not just any old way. She will leave this world through the great door, that of generous souls. She wants to give her heart, her liver, her kidneys, her lungs, she wants to give her body to everyone who needs it here on earth, since this life didn’t really want her and she reluctantly decided to go up there.

Understand that the timing of that kill and harvest was dictated by the desire to donate.

But the patient gave her consent, you may say. Sorry, if consent is all that matters, it opens the door to all kinds of horrors. A civilized society that protects the vulnerable should not countenance them.

Back to the medical journal article:

The favorable results [successful grafts], relative to DCD-III, justify careful discussion of organ donation with individuals seeking MAiD, provided that core ethical principles of autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice are strictly upheld, along with rigorous safeguards. Liver donation following MAiD has the potential to expand the donor pool and help meet the growing clinical demand for organs.

There you have it: euthanasia and organ harvesting as a plum to society. The next step will be organ harvesting as the means of euthanasia, which has already been proposed in major journals because it’s better for the organs. Ugh.

The Ethical Dilemma: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides?

Watch the following youtube video with Kelsi Sheren and Alex Schadenberg titled: The Ethical Dilemma: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides? (Youtube Link).

In this episode of The Ethical Dilemma, we dive deep into the controversial world of organ donation and presumed consent — a policy where your organs could be taken unless you explicitly opt out.

Kelsi Sheren is joined by Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, we unpack:

• How presumed consent laws are reshaping global healthcare systems.
• The ethical challenges and moral grey zones policymakers face.
• The potential benefits for patients — and the risks to personal freedom.
• The erosion of the dead donor organ donation rule.
• Why this debate touches every single one of us.
• This isn’t just about medicine — it’s about life, death, autonomy, and choice.

Learn more from Alex Schadenberg at: www.epcc.ca or the EPC blog at: www.epcblog.org

Stories supporting Bill C-218:

• I want to live. Oppose MAiD for mental illness. Support Bill C-218 (Link).
• Patti's Story. Oppose MAiD for mental illness. Support Bill C-218 (Link).
• My Story. Oppose MAiD for mental illness. Support Bill C-218 (Link).
• I got Better. Oppose MAiD for mental illness. Support Bill C-218 (Link).

Health Canada Is Funding CAMAP’s New MAiD Journal

This article was published by Kelsi Sheren on her substack on September 8, 2025.

Kelsi Sheren

Canadians should be terrified.

By Kelsi Sheren

What if I told you that the Canadian government is quietly funding death? Most people who read this Substack wouldn’t be shocked, but this new information is wild.

I’m not talking metaphorically. Not symbolically. Literally.

While every Canadian struggles to access the most basic needs of a family doctors, mental health care, and basic treatments, Health Canada is now funnelling taxpayer dollars into a project designed to normalize death, killing and getting rid of the burdens and almost nobody is screaming about talking about it. Everyone is too focused on conflicts that Canada should never have been involved in, while your distracted. Health Canada is quietly eroding the system meant to support Canadians in their weakest moments. They opened a door to the dark predators of the world. Those who prey on the weak, and personally I’m done sugar coating it for everyone.

Health Canada is building a EUGENICS FULLED MACHINE EXPANDING AND EXPLODING by the SECOND WHILE YOU’RE ALL screaming genocide distracted and unaware as your own country and North American’s fall victim to the pro death cults.

WAKE THE HELL UP.

The Canadian Association of MAiD Assessors and Providers (CAMAP), the group training doctors to administer Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD), has just launched the Canadian Journal of MAiD.

And the journal? Funded by Health Canada.

A government-backed academic platform, built to influence doctors, shape policy, and shift cultural attitudes about death itself.

And if you think this is just about patient dignity, think again. Canadian Blood Services the organization managing our blood, plasma, stem cells, organs, and tissues is sponsoring MAiD related conferences.

Assisted death, government money, and organ procurement —Are you seeing it yet?

It’s all connected.

If that doesn’t make you pause, it should. Don’t look away.

MAiD was introduced as an extraordinary, last-resort measure an option reserved for the most extreme cases of suffering. But that framing is being rewritten, over and over eroding any pathetic attempt at safeguards. What was “once exceptional” is being repositioned as ordinary, even preferable.

When Health Canada funds a journal dedicated to MAiD, it isn’t neutral research. It’s a cultural project, a legitimate pay op. It builds an academic foundation designed to normalize assisted dying not as a tragic necessity, but as a legitimate, mainstream part of healthcare.

Can you imagine attempting to justify killing someone before their natural death?

This is how cultural shifts happen. They don’t arrive with warning sirens. They unfold slowly, methodically, step by step. Let me show you how.

Journals shape the framing.

Policy aligns with the framing.

Medical education adopts the policy.

Doctors are trained accordingly.

Beliefs shift — almost without anyone noticing.

Before long, death is marketed as dignity.

Life stops being the default.

CAMAP isn’t a neutral player. It is the driving force behind the expansion of MAiD in Canada.

It trains physicians, develops guidelines, runs conferences, and produces the materials that frame assisted dying as an accepted standard of care. They are the one’s who told the NIH to add a paralytic…….Take a look at my interview with Jordan B Peterson to understand how sinister and dark this is.

Now, with the launch of the Canadian Journal of MAiD, CAMAP gains control over the research pipeline itself. That means it decides which studies are amplified, which voices are silenced, and what “evidence” shapes the conversation.

This isn’t open debate. It’s curated consent — the illusion of choice while steering Canadians toward one conclusion: assisted death is acceptable, normal, and even expected.

And when Health Canada bankrolls CAMAP’s influence, it isn’t just informing Canadians. It’s teaching us what to believe.

This is eugenics in sheep’s clothing. Period. Look at what’s already happening.

Veterans are being offered MAiD instead of treatment.

People with disabilities are being told death is an “option” when supports are unavailable.

The poor and mentally ill are being steered toward assisted death because their suffering is “too expensive” to address.

That’s not dignity. It’s cost-saving through death.

And now, add this: Canadian Blood Services — the organization responsible for managing Canada’s organs, tissues, plasma, and blood — is sponsoring CAMAP’s conferences.

Government funding. Physician training. Organ procurement.

All deeply entangled.

At minimum, this creates an optics nightmare. At worst, it raises disturbing questions about how policy-driven death aligns with supply-driven organ collection.

My next question is so where is all of Canadians consent in all of this? True informed consent demands full transparency — every motive, every incentive, every risk laid bare.

But can we really claim Canadians are making free, informed choices when Health Canada funds pro-MAiD research and education, when CAMAP writes the ethical guidelines for doctors, and Organ collection networks are financially aligned with MAiD expansion?

This isn’t informed consent. It’s manufactured consent.

This isn’t about one journal or one organization. This is about a systemic shift, Health Canada funds the journal pushing assisted dying deeper into our healthcare culture. CAMAP writes the rules, trains physicians, and controls the narrative. Canadian Blood Services sponsors MAiD-related events while managing organs and tissues. Vulnerable Canadians are already reporting feeling pressured to choose MAiD because real alternatives aren’t offered.

This isn’t healthcare.

This is policy-driven death dressed up as compassion.

When government funding, medical training, and organ procurement are all tied to the same agenda, this stops being about personal choice.

This is about control.

This is about shaping how Canadians think about life and death — and quietly steering us toward outcomes that benefit systems and institutions, not patients.

If Health Canada, CAMAP, and Canadian Blood Services are aligned in promoting MAiD, we have to ask:

Are Canadians truly choosing assisted death; the answer is no. We being guided toward it.

Because once this cultural shift takes root, reversing it will be nearly impossible. This isn’t about politics. It’s about ethics. It’s about trust. It’s about whether we value life, autonomy, and dignity or whether we’re willing to trade them for convenience and cost efficiency.

Canadians deserve transparency. We deserve informed consent. And we deserve a healthcare system that protects life first, or any health care at all.

Because when death becomes policy, the real question is simple.

Who protects life?

Not CAMAP, Health Canada or Canadian Blood Services that’s for damn sure.

This appeared on Kelsi Sheren’s substack and reposted with permission.